Area 52

Speechless

2011-08-16T21:23:00.005-04:00

The sad thing is that I have tried to write many times in the last few months. Everything ends up getting saved as drafts or just outright deleted. Even though I have finally realized what the essential problem has been, I am uncomfortable with the text. Basically I have been having a crisis of faith.

In language.
Communication.
Humanity, of course.

Admitting all this does not carry the standard implication that I am now over it. I have had some promising moments is all, especially in the form of a few fantastic novels, an Anne Lamott memoir, and some reminders of grace around me. I cannot yet say that these beacons are enough to dilute the taste the last several months (years) has left; I can only say that I might be willing to struggle through the awkwardness of trying to form this all into something worthwhile.

Finding the sequence of events is difficult and perhaps meaningless. Our move to Indiana has been a nearly constant saliency even over a year past our return. A year of run bad in poker and random negative variance in nearly every aspect of our lives seems to be the fault of that previous event. We can be discussing Enterprise charging us six-hundred dollars for the chipped (we're talking micro-chipped) windshield, and then it's all traced back to buying our crappy sentra in Tulsa and selling the Maxima since we would only need one car in Indiana...all leading up to being in this driveway at this time and getting rammed into and having to rent a car while said crappy sentra is being repaired. Or, take the utility crisis of 2010: Centerpoint charging us for gas when we had no gas; Direct Energy charging us for the wrong house. And all I could think during the eight months (months!) it took to straighten that mess out was how much it all reminded me of the Indiana water company charging us over two-hundred dollars for our vacant next door's month-long leak and getting away with it for reasons I still can't fathom. As you can see, this pattern of discussion makes coherent writing nearly impossible. What's even worse is that these things are just the tip. After all, it doesn't get more petty than bills even though most of our life is spent in the pursuit of managing them.

The worst, by far, has been the people we have been encountering since Indiana. I mean, obviously there can not be much good to say for the Poker House situation that ended with one roommate splitting as fast as he could for the West Coast and the other hoping Tom and I might be thrown from a bridge. We have finally gotten to a point where we no longer speak daily of this latter roommate, but keep running into folks that pull up the stench of likening.

A couple weeks ago, Tom and I went for an early morning run on our most beloved trail by the creek near our house. It was fairly populated with other runners and walkers trying to take advantage of the relative not-so-hot (cannot bring myself to call it anything near cool). One moment, I was blissfully flying ahead of Tom in a rare burst of running enjoyment and the next I was moving past a neighbor of ours and was suddenly confused and scared by how terrified I had apparently made him. His eyes were huge with fear, his mouth a frozen "O" as I came up beside him and he swung around to catch my approach. I smiled my apology assuming he would recognize me as I had recognized him even from behind. How many times had we seen him and his wife with their dogs on that trail after all? I couldn't tell you whether he ever did but I can certainly say that he did not care either way. As soon as I continued to run past him, he began yelling at my back, "You can't just sneak up on someone like that!" Tom reached him at this point and stopped to see what this man was yelling at his wife. I heard Tom stop running and turned around in time to see this neighbor of ours step into Tom with chin down and chest up, screaming all veins and blood, "YOU WANNA HIT ME?!" It still makes my jaw drop in the remembering. When Tom didn't break eye contact, the guy reached for his pocket. It was only a moment of knowing that I was about to see a gun but it felt like an eternity before I realized he had actually pulled out a cell phone and was screaming about the police. Again, how do you write about something like this? I don't know how many times I've tried to put down one step following another in the scene and knowing over and over again that words cannot approach the blur of adrenaline and rage that occured in those two minutes. I have also tried to write about this guy coming up behind me in the grocery store a week later. How I was alone. How all I could see was his eyes so wide I could see the blood at the edges.

In Indiana, we had a six-month immersion in passive-aggression delivered in conversational forms that always slipped somewhere to the left of rational. I began to feel then as I used to as the younger sister I was: that my words became something else as they left me and returned in the convolutions of pseudo-reason. Helpless to find the flaw anywhere except perhaps in myself. Just as when I had been younger, I began to feel that I was losing my grasp on my own reality. I would be so sure of what I thought, but my constant inability to communicate even the mundanities to a particular person left me insecure in the most profound sense. And the recent reinforcement of random encounters with sociopaths is no help.

My solution then, as now, could only be that there is no other choice but to return to my understanding of things. We are all only given the tools of our senses and have only the choice of using the information we gain through them or else hand our senses over to some other control. There is very little actual confidence to be found here; only a sort of resignation and the only bit of hope there is. It may be the hardest thing any of us have to do, but what is the point if we don't live our own lives and all that entails? As Dar Williams would put it, "Say what it is you gotta say to Be."

Amnesia

2011-04-22T20:04:00.002-04:00

I honestly couldn't believe it. I mean, I know they hate Obama, and, really, who is a fan anymore (other than those of us who can still appreciate a rhetoritician for his skill of language)? But we were talking about perhaps the most important event in modern history. How could something that happened less than four years ago, something that changed the global economic system, be forgotten already? I remember the bailout debacle unfolding in nightmare form those several months in 2008 and cannot imagine anyone forgetting the moments our economic hopes died. Let me postpone the arguments that it had died many decades previously. Let me focus on the almost universally accepted idea that giving money to corporations who had gone bankrupt due to bad business decisions was a lethal blow to the idea of capitalism. Let us also postpone the argument of capitalism's worth itself for a moment. The salient fact of the matter is that a competitive market cannot exist when risks for the largest entities are covered by the taxed populace. End of story. Also end of story is that this was enacted under none other than George W. Bush. How then did I find myself in a conversation over lunch where a much respected and much loved coworker of mine was adamantly claiming that this was all Obama's doing? The man was so convinced that he laid a good day's wages on the verity of his assertion. I felt myself gaping like an unwatered goldfish and my tact dissolving into the aether. We were all there weren't we? Not too long ago by any adult's standards even. Yet somehow this even has been removed from Bush's platter. Now, I find the Iraq debate to be just as obvious, but this at least we can all agree was a serious blow to what we like to call the American way. And it was on this deified president's watch. This is not a matter of opinion. This is not a statement of support for Obama. This is a fact that we all just experienced. Out of curiosity after this conversation, I asked my twenty-something brother-in-law if he knew which president had enacted the bailout. His response:"...Nixon...?" I know, I was hoping he was joking too. Unfortunately he's a big fan of being right too, and usually offers his best guess.

It may be too much to ask that our bipartisan society have real conversations about opinionated issues. Especially too much to ask that one "side" be seen agreeing with the other. I have seen already that it is certainly too much to ask that these conversations be had in as imperical fashion as possible. Idealism is a luxury we certainly cannot afford. The thing is, I really thought we could agree on the basics of shared experience. The very basics. Not the why or how. Just who and when. Unfortunately, even that is suspect and my insistence today might soon be reduced to the opinionated raving of an obvious liberal. The fact that lies are being sold as truth will not be sufficient reason for pause on my coworker's part. He will most likely be too busy stewing over the young brat who showed so much disrespect. Who am I to claim that the only disrespect is allowing such obvious deception to stand? I will not say sorry, but I also fully recognize that I scored no victory today. Remembering, apparently, can be so overrated.

Bad beat...

2011-04-16T21:08:00.005-04:00

I have learned the hard way that talking someone out of believing that poker is gambling is a losing battle. If you think the term "poker professional" is an oxymoron, then this blog is not for you. I know enough to not expect any pity for the situation that has just developed in our little world, but it is devastating nonetheless. In an era when the government as a whole is the subject of outright scorn from its populace and even the relatively uninformed can see the rampant corruption, the DOJ has been sicked on an easy scapegoat for an easy political win: online poker. The roots are in a 2005 bill that was attached to a homeland defense measure that basically outlawed the financial transactions between banks and international poker sites. Not blackjack or roulette or horse racing...just poker. The GOP was able to claim a moral victory to their constituents and a veritable drought was wrought in the online poker community. It was largely an empty win (as most political gestures are) as the bill was full of loopholes that banks and poker players and poker sites were happy to exploit, but it did have a stifling effect nonetheless. Such is the game anyway.

Unfortunately the three biggest sites overstepped and, most importantly, didn't pay off the right people in doing so. They committed bank fraud and money laundering and, even though these crimes are nothing relative to the condoned activities of banks and major corporations in this country, they are going to pay. Hundreds of thousands of players now have their accounts frozen because the U.S. Government needed a score. How our government can seize the assets of an international company, I don't know. The question of why is painfully obvious however. No one feels the need to protect the poker professional because they do not recognize the legitimacy of the field.

So our dream of freedom is officially in limbo. We have to figure out how to transition to a live game, which is a much softer proposition but requires a much larger bankroll. We have to figure out if it's even worth it. The skills that Tom especially has developed are applicable to nearly every field, but are not generally recognized on a resume. And besides, the jobs that require resumes are tantamount to admitting defeat. Not to say that it won't come to that, but hopefully we can maneuver through this nonsense of a situation and retain some of what we've fought for. Again, I'm sure many of you do not see the tragedy of the situation. It is normal in our society (and expected even) that both adults in a family will work at least forty hours a week and generally in separate occupations. The average American should expect to be doing this and still not be able to save hardly anything. Vacations are limited or non-existent and rest is a forbidden pleasure. The fact that Tom and I have attempted anything other than this lifestyle is generally seen as a negative statement of our personalities. It does not seem to matter that poker is essentially a simplified form of the basis of capitalism and modern business practices. It does not matter that our skills are a perfect match for the game. And it certainly does not matter that our sole motivation is to have the freedom to actually live together and freely.

I just hope that the implications of this move by the DOJ might have some impact at least. If nothing else, please ask yourself if your government has any right to dictate what you do with the money your able to keep out of their hands and for yourself. The thing is, we say that we are free; we fight wars in the name of this freedom; yet, how can we possibly make such a claim when we are not even free to do what we will with our resources. Does it not become apparent that such things as property and liberty do not actually exist anymore? Poker was an easy win for them, but the fundamental argument has and will lead them to whatever restricting of our resources they may find. They have only every incentive to do so, especially with the silence of their people.

First Impressions

2011-03-03T21:57:00.002-05:00

There are few jobs that bring daily stories right into a writer's lap. I mean, ones that you don't even have to stretch for. Skilled writers can, of course, make even something as mundane as a bottle cap interesting...but I am not of that caliber. So I consider myself lucky and, up to this point, wasteful of the bounty that I receive in a constant flow. Don't even ask me why easy conversations with strangers happen so frequently over a generator, but so it is. So, for the next little while, I will try to capture the moments that make this manual labor occupation a feast of stories.

This morning brought us to the middle of nowhere north of Reklaw (the town that wanted to be Walker, TX but, since that was already taken, just spelled it backwards). Usually, we can find where we are supposed to go by looking for the biggest house in the area since these machines generally necessitate a certain level of wealth. This particular rural pocket, however, had no houses that even hinted at such luxury. The road was pretty typical of rural East Texas though: half the houses abandoned and falling down and yards filled with the bikes and tires and cars and trash of generations of hoarders. Right past one such hollowed-out clutter we finally saw the unit sitting right off the road and in front of a tidy pier-and-beam, patched up Craftsman kit house.

The customer came out her door as we drove up and beamed a smile of welcome to us that allayed the fears that tend to lace the backwoods of East Texas. I can no longer hold on my hand the number of times we've been told we better call before we come next time because we'll be shot first and asked questions later (almost the same wording every time). This woman had told my mom her disturbing tale of tragedy when she called for our service, so I already knew enough to imagine that she had every right to join the ranks of the paranoid and preemptively aggressive so common around these Texas backroads. But her smile and the colorful banners waving “Welcome” along her drive stated emphatically that she was fighting her demons in a different way. Her great-granddaughter skipped down the steps as we drove in, completing the picture of wholesome vitality in the midst of the surrounding decay.

I immediately looked to the house at the end of the line next door, since I had been told that this was the source of our customer's nightmare history. The unkempt shack had housed her husband's murderer. I looked back at her open radiance and tried to imagine her opening her door to the inch-deep blood she had described. The neighbor had been a young meth addict that came looking for money one midnight when this woman's husband was alone. When the husband told the man that he could have money but not for drugs, the man grabbed a pry bar and beat him to death. Looking at the little girl, she told us that her great-granddaughter was in her house down the road that night and she sat up in bed at midnight, looked out her window with her special-for-Grandpapa smile, and waved goodbye.

The old woman and the little girl planted flowers together as we worked on the generator. There were only moments where the agony bled through. “This is what keeps me going,” she said as she caught me watching the two of them, and her smile was the saddest joy I think I have ever seen.

***

In the afternoon, we went even deeper in the sticks to a family-run meat-processing business. Anyone who has read my Thanksgiving post (mostly about Eating Animals...as in, not eating them) will know that I was not terribly excited about doing any sort of maintenance for a business that I consider close to whatever evil there is. Usually these places have their own feed lot and the stink of misery and filth is overwhelming even from a distance. As we drove up to this place, however, the first thing I saw was a herd of pigs...outside. If you know anything about the pig (sorry...”pork”) industry today, you know that most pigs that are killed and eaten are not capable of surviving out of a highly regimented confinement. They do not breed; they do not root; they don't lay in the mud or the shade...No. They are kept in cells about the size of their body. The females are especially hated as they are kept in “gestation crates” (tiny cells in which they are inseminated, give birth, and almost unilaterally go insane). Often, the sows will gnaw on the bars as they lose their minds, the blood pooling on the ground. All of this is especially heinous when you consider the natural sentience of a pig. They play; they form intricate social bonds; they are also one of the few mammals that have sex for pleasure itself. So, having watched and read so much about these creatures' torture, to see them lounging under the pine trees was a pleasure I had not hoped for. Next to the pigs (10 acres we were later told), was a pasture for the cows. Not a feed lot. There was hay and grass and cows of all different ages grazing together. At this point, I started feeling greedy and began looking around for chickens or turkeys, but apparently the good of this business had reached its limit before the fowl. To my knowledge, there is still not a decent place to find one of these birds that lives a natural life and dies a humane and sanitary death. Still, there was plenty of reason for excitement, and none of the grime that covers our factory farm industry.

The butcher was everything you would think of when you imagine the butchers of two generations ago. He was rotund and red-cheeked and all smiles and Southern charm. He watched and talked as we set the valves and changed the oil on his sap-speckled generator. When we were done, he took us on a tour of his little slaughterhouse. It was a little shocking when he opened the cooler doors, pridefully showing us the rows of hanging carcasses. The smell of fresh blood was slightly nauseating, but I also was quick to appreciate the clean flesh of the bodies and the pristine floor of the cooler. The big question still loomed: how did he run the killing floor? He took us there next and, again, I was surprised by the lack of gore or even dirt. When I made this comment, the butcher smiled and said that they spent just about as much time cleaning as butchering. I saw the hoist for draining the bodies, but I couldn't find the killing tool which was my biggest concern. Finally, I apologized for being so curious, but I had to know what his slaughtering process was. “We shoot them. Well, I have a guy that shoots them. Just can't bring myself to do it.” He pointed to the metal gate behind me and told me that was where the animals were brought in and shot. It should be and is horrifying, but not when compared to the industry standard. Often the animal is not even unconscious when its throat is slit and it's hoisted up to bleed out. This can take minutes, for which the animal is aware and suffering. There are numerous stories of outright torture even (again, especially for pigs) where the killing floor employees cut off pieces of the animal before dealing any sort of lethal wound. So, yeah, a bullet in the calming confinement of the metal chute sounds pretty damn humane to me.

I was glad to shake this man's hand as we left. Who could have guessed that a butcher simply doing his job well could be a hero of sorts.

Turkey Day

2010-11-25T09:59:00.002-05:00

After four months of no-looking-back vegetarianism, I am looking down the barrel of a chicken's carcass. It has been the easiest thing I've ever done not eating meat. After all, who wants to eat something that brings up images of animal torture and bacterial cesspool processing plants? I have literally had nightmares about having to eat meat in the past four months, which is probably a typical over-reaction on the part of my imagination. Still, the fact remains. So the (perfectly reasonable) question is: why eat meat ever again?

Enter my little brother (in-law). He's recently found his passion as a chef and is in his first year of culinary school. This being his first Thanksgiving as a burgeoning expert on The Feast, he has decided to cook us this meal and this meal is to be mostly held down by chicken. Perhaps it is easy enough to see my quandary. Certainly I have gotten enough grief at restaurants when I order an array of sides (and all too often find the pieces of bacon in green beans, corn, okra, spinach...why so much bacon I ask you Southern Cooking?!) and call into question the meat-centered choices of the rest of the table. Even saying nothing (which is an innocence I can't always claim), it is still a judgement being made. And judgement is the last thing I want to offer to my brother in poor thanks of his creative offering today.

It is no mystery that Thanksgiving played a large part in the discussions of the book that led me to all this: Eating Animals (Jonathan Safran Foer). It is the holiday that, almost even more than Christmas, emphasizes the community that is one's family. The coincidence of this and the centerpiecing of large animals to be consumed is unfortunate but ingrained. What is Thanksgiving without the smells of roasting turkey or game? While it is true that I am among a growing percent of our population that would find the celebration a lot more enjoyable without the consumption of flesh, I have no illusions as to where the majority of people still are on the issue. Foer compiled his book from three years intensive research and philosophical exploration and made the case against how we raise and eat flesh in the most compelling of terms, and yet even he still came up with the problem of Thanksgiving. The problem is that there is a vast difference between the casual holocaust of McDonald's McNuggets and the loving offerings of meat that are so central to most family's celebration of this holiday. Surely there must be a consideration for the exercise of community that this meal is in its highest form.

The author came to the conclusion that the conversation of not eating meat even on Thanksgiving could provide a benefit in itself to one's family. And I agree that it has been a good conversation between me and mine. However, the conversation has been had and yet we are still to find a chicken at the center (and almost the sum total) of our little brother's debut meal. While I have plenty of ethical ground to stand on in refusing this meal, I find little in the form of showing my gratitude for his gift. So I have made the personally difficult decision to share every part of this meal with him and this family. And I do look forward to the magic that my brother will work, and the memories we are about to share as we eat together. It may not be an objective conclusion, but it is an expression of the compromise that is central to any love. So I am grateful for this holiday that has the potential for such a real incarnation of love and hope that we can all find the large and small ways to foster each precious bond we have. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Tradey Track

2010-10-15T08:28:00.002-04:00

I have witnessed the erosion of my remembered landscape with every trip back home from my journeys here and there across the country. My old bedroom is occupied by paying tenants now and the sacred trees that enveloped our home have been removed by one ambition followed by another. First it was the Southern lot that our backdoor neighbors wanted clear for RV parking and a fence obstructing what was once one of the main thoroughfares of my childhood. I cried watching the slaughter of trees and memories that these strangers had no knowledge of or regard for. Would they have ceased if they had known the magnificent tricycle races that had sped down that tree lined lane? Or maybe if they had experienced the miracle of climbing the impossibly thin branches to the heights of the lone Holly Tree. Did they even notice its beauty as it fell in graceful death to their blades?

The final vestige was lost by the time I came home to call it home again. The Eastern trail – our beloved Tradey Track – was lost to the brambles of neglect some time ago, but the forest remained until this year when a neighbor who should have known better decided to clear the place for his second house (across the street from his perfectly good first house). My first memories were formed running this trail with my two best friends as we transformed from frolicking squirrels to flying unicorns and saw mythical monsters and beasts in the fantasy world that was our woods. As we grew, the place retained its magic, even as all else suffered from the disillusionment of age. Playing pretend was lost to us, but the amber light filtering through the leaves held us all the same.

There was an ancient tower of a tree in the exact center of this world. Its heart was rotting but the outer wood clung with vicious tenacity to the strength of its youth. It wrought its mutilation into beauty as it provided shelter in its cavernous trunk to the small creatures of the woods and an escalier of winding scarred bark steps to reach its hammock of barren branches. How many afternoons did I spend dreaming in the cradle of its arms listening to the creak of its rheumatic sighing in the wind. Somehow, I never feared this friend collapsing with me on its branches and somehow it never did. I believed in forever those golden afternoons in the trees even as I slipped into the isolation that became my adolescence.

I wonder if this man will be haunted as I am by the forgotten voices of children held in the soil and roots of the land he has taken for his own. Or are those memories lost in the charred remains of the forest that sheltered and cherished the wonderment of children who still knew how to recognize mystery?

Stranger...

2010-09-01T19:46:00.003-04:00

It says something that I have lost track of exactly how many months I have neglected this blog...you know, the one I was promising to update three times every week. So now I come skulking back, feeling entirely too contrite in what is meant to be my space. So what else is new?

I have been working for the last three or four months in the blaze of East Texas summer and the constant drenching sweat of manual labor under the sun. In the course of this work, I have met people virtually every day that I wanted to write about and then every night I have hunkered into sleep promising that tomorrow I will give all these characters their words. So many moments lost, but let us call this tomorrow shall we?

This week, we have been doing finish work on a monstrosity of a house for a retired couple. No grandkids that I know of and just the one surviving son. Which brings me to my story. Several weeks ago, we were working on the remodel of this couple's former home before they sell it, and I (being the nosy electrician that I am) was perusing the family photos still on their walls and was taken by the surprise of recognizing their daughter. In fact, I had danced with their daughter for nearly a decade, but had never known her last name and therefore had made no connection to these people who only had last names as far as I was concerned. But there she was. Pictures of her in every ballet costume I remembered and suddenly I could smell the leather of ballet slippers and hear the canned music that was, to me, so beautiful to dance to. For an hour, as I passed the pictures on each fetching trip for the master electricians, I struggled to remember her name and failed. It was a color? Something like a flower? Maybe Heather? It was all wrong. Finally a friend of her family arrived and my mother asked her in the course of conversation about this known, unknown daughter. The first thing we discovered was that her name was Brooke. The second thing we were told was that she was dead. Almost a decade ago. In a car crash. The finality of it brought an inwash of details -- the girl's easy smile, her heartbreaking grace on the dance floor -- that I had forgotten in trying to remember the obvious detail of her name. Seeking only to place her in a small part of my history, I had just learned to mourn her. Making this an even more awkward sensation was the fact that her death was so far in the past that even mentioning condolences could be offensive. But how sorry I was to find such tragedy in my half-remembered childhood memories.

Now, I could tell you many things about Brooke's parents, having made it a sort of study this last week as we have been working for them. I could tell you that they are of the particular brand of wealth that despises finality because they can afford to make options a way of life. I could tell you that they consider this 10,000 square foot "home" a rural cottage ("It's the garage that makes it look big"...and yes, that is a quote). I could spend an entire post telling you about the full day we spent digging a 500 foot ditch and pulling as many feet of beligerently heavy wire just so that they could turn a light on and off on the barn from the house. But I think more telling than any of this is the fact that I spent the majority of my childhood with their daughter and yet I must wonder if they even know who I am. It would be different if my appearance had changed significantly over the years (and I often wish that it had as going to Wal-Mart in this small town is a constant minefield of ancient acquaintances and family friends). It would also be excusable if ballet had not been such an intensive activity for those of us in Ms. Gobel's advanced class, but, as it was, it was a dominant feature of all of our lives. So, I labor on their shell of a house each day simply wondering if my face reminds them of something they should know and if they have any inkling of the freshly sad memories I have of their dead daughter.

It is a symptom of an overiding theme I have found in this town, but never seen so well put. In essence, it is the reality that there are people of consequence and then there are all the others that maintain those people of consequence.

I danced with a passion far outstripping my potential and calling the attention of the fiery Ms. Gobel in the best of ways. My frame was too large to ever break into the upper echelon of the dancing world, but in the microcosm of Nacogdoches, I became better than I was meant to be under the angry French woman's tutelage. Ms. Gobel began to point to me in class demonstrations as how things should be done, and I remember feeling such anticipation for the greater recognition she was preparing me for. But every recital, I would find myself once again in the unflattering background as I watched less dedicated and less talented girls dance the leads. It wasn't until my last year that I finally had acquired enough disillusionment to see the inexorable connection between the wealth of the parents and the role awarded to the girls. It was of little importance to any of them I'm sure, but the thinking probably went along the lines of: "Well, if I must sit through two hours of watching all this prancing around, then I want my daughter to be in front. Here's a donation Ms. Gobel." And every year, I was simply devastated to watch from the wings as the gangly daughters of doctors and lawyers destroyed roles that they could care less about. There was no suspense in their desires because to want, for them, was to have.

And I return nearly ten years later to find the same place that I left. My degrees and experience do nothing to open the locks that only wealth has the key for here. My smile is interpreted as fawning and my speech is seen as artifice ("Oh my, what big words!"). Certainly this is not an inviolable rule, but it is so pervasive as to warrant damnation. It is also so common as to encourage my current role of subversive in their midst. You see, while they are blinded by the status that is so easy for them to ignore, I am free to observe and record and amass my own wealth of characters and stories. It may be a distant and unlikely revenge, but oh how sweet to imagine any one of them picking up a novel and finding the unflattering portrayal of themselves within. Of course, I would be too idealistic if I allowed myself the daydream without admitting that I am sure they would be as blind to themselves in a story as they are to themselves in reality. It is not so easy for perception to change.

Riding into the sunset

2010-07-09T19:15:00.004-04:00

I am becoming disturbingly aware of a Southern writer coming to life in my head. It took me long enough to consider myself heading towards authorship in the first place, but to consider the Southerness of it all...? How appalling to find myself looking at the backward designs of my past and seeing there a burnished array of stunning characters and beautiful backdrops.

As a child, I practiced the leaving of the South in every way. I carefully eradicated the Texan accent and vocabulary, patterning my own on a hodgepodge of indie British and American (Northern of course) films and books. Still, I was left with the supremely embarrassing "i" sound instead of "eh" in words like "pen" versus "pin" (there being no distinction in most of the South by the way), and the-A-tur instead of theatre (spelled in the British way so you may hear it with the proper British pronunciation in your head). Until college, I was blithely unaware of these important and elusive details. Two of the first friends I made at this Midwestern university introduced themselves as Jenny and Jenny. There followed a discussion in the group that was, at the time, completely befuddling. Another girl asked one of the two if she was Jenny or Jenny, to which the girl replied (as if the question was not completely absurd), "I'm Jenny." The other girl threw in what I thought must be either redundant or a joke, "Well, I'm Jenny." At this point in the conversation, I thought my then sleep-deprived mind might be causing me to hallucinate, since no one seemed to think there was anything amiss at hand. Finally, I had to risk the embarrassment of playing my usual role of gullible punchline to ask what they were all talking about. After some discussion, they finally ascertained the root of my confusion and spent the next month training this verbal Texas dangler out of my system. You will be happy to know that Jenny and Ginnie soon became distinguished as the two separately named beings that they were.

I tried to find spatial distance as soon as possible as well. At the age of eleven, I was already spending weeks at a time away from home, going to summer camp in Colorado. When I was fourteen, I went to a music camp in Pensecola, Florida (a story that I have yet to find adequate words for...if you know anything about the underground system of ultra-conservative educational systems, you may guess why) where I learned about Interlochen in Michigan. Of course, I simply had to go there and did the following year. Hands down, the summer spent in Northern Michigan with musicians and artists my age spouting such non-Southern refinement and class was by far the most formative and home-distancing experience of my life. I was certain after the intense molding of those weeks that I would never settle for Texas again.

And, with brief retreats from the North here and there, I didn't for over a decade.

Now, I certainly do not regret any of the experiences I have had away from my childhood stomping grounds (with the glaring exception of three miserable years in the bumhole of Oklahoma). I have truly loved each place I have experienced and miss each one as a home to some piece of me. As such, it is more than surprising to find myself so grateful to return here. This homecoming has found me receptive to the iconic lifestyle and characters of Deep East Texas in a way I did not believe myself capable of. The distance and time I so intentionally put between myself and this place has brought me back here with the sparkling eyes of a stranger. Where I used to see simpleminded misogyny in the cowboy caricatures so prevalent here, I have begun to see a certain charming naivety. The symbols they use (holding the door for the "ladies" for example) are generally well-meant and kind. They hold back no respect as I have worked toe-to-toe with them in the arena of manual labor. Still, at the end of the sweat-drenching, back-breaking day, that door is going to be held open for me and I am slowly learning to accept it with the same grace with which it is offered.

Likewise, I am finding the vernacular comforting and comfortable on my tongue and pleasant to listen to. It is remarkable to me that such a thing as an accent can exist in our globalized society, and it is reassuring in its distinctiveness. I love that I can feel the slow gathering of half-finished syllables as opposed to the nasal blend of the Midwest. Neither is superior, but it is a great relief to abandon my childhood dogma that said otherwise.

There may still be all the things I loved to hate about this place when I was younger, but for the first time I can see the loveliness and say without embarrassment that it is good to be home.

Bipartisan

2010-06-26T08:49:00.003-04:00

This house - my former and current home - is a social experiment of sorts that is rarely if ever invested in. Perhaps I am too open-minded to state my case as a liberal, but in the context I would almost certainly be considered a die hard. The context being, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh devotees. Of course, they too are open-minded and rational beings that make the idea of us all being polar opposites somewhat untrue. That said, it is probably as close to true as you're going to find under one undemolished roof. Breakfast talk can literally go along lines of the reasons for impeaching Obama and instituting martial law on one end to the sanctity of eco-systems and the argument for human restraint on the other.

Here is the fantastic, unbelievable thing: the truth as each of us sees it is voiced and heard by the various parties day after day. Because we love each other unconditionally, there is suddenly an atmosphere that allows honesty and acceptance where there is only ridicule and scorn in the public debate. Since the two political parties not only do not accept each other's stances but are not re-elected if they even appear to consider each other's ideas, there is no possibility for open debate. The reigns of power are held by extremists by necessity and thoughtful conversation is replaced by fear-mongering and empty platitudes. The macroscopic venue for change is, in my opinion, hopeless.

Yet, in the microcosm of our unlikely home and family, I see a small seed. I see the respect of listening and the freedom of love to express and refine opinions with and against each other. I see apparently divergent theories and ideas melding in conversations that shouldn't be possible in today's framing. There is certainly plenty of blustering and cacophony as these ideas meet and clash, but there is a commitment to each other that allows us to weather the storm and come to some peace on the other side. Though we are molded by all our inputs of media and political guidance to be extremists, we find the secret moderates within as we let our mutual love and respect seep into the conversations handed to us bereft of anything so lofty.

Perpetual Motion

2010-06-23T22:45:00.003-04:00

Bills to pay. Miles to drive. Tools to move, remove, place, replace. Phone ringing. Customers customing. Sleep when you can or can't help it. Wondering about tomorrow. Too busy with today.

Interruption.

A rain storm and sheltering under a tree. Warm scent of baked and cooling pine simmering with the fog of rain on Texas pavement. A moment insisting respite. Mother and daughter resting weary backs, sharing time removed.

Sabbath

2010-06-20T09:41:00.003-04:00

I woke up in the middle of last night in the throes of pure animal pain, the muscles in my calf tangling and choking themselves. There is nothing you can do except ride the waves of pain in a crumpled, whimpering heap. While I have spent this morning milking every bit of the limping sadness left to me still, I will never forget the morning after morning stretching to months that I would leap from my top bunk to the cold concrete floor after the nightly double cramps that would rack me every night of basic training. I can remember the electric shock of impact as I landed to muscles that told me nightly that they needed to be tended to and cared for. I learned to shuffle (instead of the required running) to the bathroom then back to my bunk to begin the morning ritual of cleaning that would never be quite good enough to spare us from the paired morning ritual of doing push-ups in our own sweat for punishment. All this with the muscles in my legs cleaving to themselves and the bone as if they had forgotten the natural assembly of relax and contract. Somehow, I would find myself on the PT field a half hour later, pushing or running or flutter-kicking, and I would discover that my legs had released me of their reasonable demands. I eventually learned to hold my consciousness somewhere just below wakefulness as the pain screamed at me every night and then let the scant dreams enfold me back on the ebb. Somehow, it became a sacrament of sorts, blessing my body and mind with the remembrance that I was human and not the mindless, heartless machine they would have me be. The weakness and terror of those moments was precious to me as the never-flinching shield of my days melted in the small whimpers of my night.

The work that brought me to this memory is wholesome and good, and I am glad for the chance of comparison that such a small but insistent part of my body can give me. And the comparison is kind. To now be surrounded by people that consider even this smallest and most habitual of pains something worth commiserating over and tending to. To find nourishment in both my labors and rest. This is what all of us are really searching for, is it not?

Old story; New beginnings

2010-06-16T19:49:00.003-04:00

It is the day for writing, but can my newly adjusting, bone-tired, sun-weary mind and body come up with anything more interesting to write about than the divinities of cleansing showers and my soft, soft bed? Forgive me if the result is negative, but I will try anyway.

I took the train from St. Louis, Tom and I having battled a storm that came with a ferocity I haven't seen since the Oklahoma plains to get to the station. The anxiety of leaving was mercifully abated slightly as I encountered the almost antiquated joys of rail travel. Whereas I was unceremoniously booted from the last flight I tried to take and given virtually no recompense, checking in at the train station took all of five minutes. When I asked whether or not I needed to check my duffel bag (a point which was critical in the flight fiasco by the way), I was met with the response that I could if I wanted, but could really do whatever I chose. The attendant was even teasing me about my trusty travel lion/pillow instead of exhibiting the absurd ennui of overwhelming stress that I had seen in the attendants at the airport. At the depot, we all, workers and travelers alike, were relaxed and serene even.

Well, all except for the young kid who was apparently approaching an ecstasy of grief as the time got nearer for he and his mother to get on the train without his dad. When the somewhat late (but at least more on schedule than is generally true in aviation these days) train arrived, we all calmly lined up to give our tickets to the conductor and watched the miniature (but fundamental) drama of the small boy saying goodbye. He latched on to his father's neck as they all finally came to the spot where non-travelers had to stop and exploded in a litanous stream of "I love you, I'll miss you, I love you...". Even the conductor was moved and muttered to me as I handed him my own ticket, "Well, that was nice now." Never mind that the child was at that peculiar stage of life that delivered him from his grief only minutes later as excitement of the coming adventure overtook him.

It was amazing to find myself with a similar experience to the young one as I found myself a little relieved so quickly from the anxieties of making the decision to work and live so far away for a time. As I situated myself in the oh, so spacious seat of the upper level in my designated car, I looked out my window at the setting sun and found the realization that we were going to be alright. Whatever was coming, whatever was past...we would find the way. One day at a time.

Second Wind

2010-06-12T12:32:00.002-04:00

It is an unfortunate and difficult thing, but not uncommon: we are being forced by a Spring of upsets and false starts to take a few steps back before we can continue. I can't decide between the two of us who is going to have the harder job since poker is quite literally the most difficult thing I have ever done and I am quite looking forward to the "respite" of manual labor that I am heading to in working with my parents. Tom stays here in the poor, abandoned Poker House with Greta-meister and continues to fight the beast of cards and behaviors that has trampled us so hard. I will be living relatively stress-free at least in the manageability of definable tasks and physical exertion while leaving for a time the necessarily all-consuming and never-ending tasks of mental and personal evaluation in playing a profitable game online. It is not really a matter of having lost money to poker, but simply having existed for too long on the statistical back slopes and having to shell out the cost of living in the meantime. So we will be trying to retake the hill from a different angle.

You will probably find me a more mopey author for some time, but know that I will continue writing and that I am content even with the difficulties of the situation. I have the opportunity to help us rebuild without having to give another day to the meaningless redundancies of most of the workforce. I get to work with and for my family. I am a grateful if momentarily sad writer/electrical apprentice/former and soon-to-be-again professional card player.

Homage

2010-06-09T21:54:00.008-04:00

I have long been meaning to write a tribute of sorts to a dear friend of mine who would be totally appalled by such an idea. She is far too modest and grounded to accept such praise as "hero" or "role-model", so I will share these terms with you and hope that she doesn't get too angry with me.

I met her almost seven years ago as I took charge of my first piano class. My supervisor had taken me aside prior to the semester to ask me if I would be okay teaching a blind student. Her demeanor when asking the question sobered me and stilled my immediate response of "why would I mind?". She told me that it was going to be challenging for the entire music staff to have a new music student with such needs and special requirements and that she didn't want to overburden me. We could move the student to a different class with a more experienced teacher perhaps. Thank God for my stubbornness kicking in and allowing me to say that there would be no such need. How much my life would have suffered without this person I was so cautiously introduced to. I can, without reservation, say that she was also the best piano student I ever had. I often told her that I wished that all my students would forget they could see for the hour in my class and feel the keys like she did. What a gift. And here's the truly remarkable thing about her: she would absolutely agree with me that it is a gift. She has used every obstacle (and there have been heartbreakingly many) to climb to new heights of self actualization and was already one of the most wise and independent souls I had ever met when I came to know her in her freshman year.

While at the state school where I met her, she was the victim of countless acts of ignorance and malice due only to misconceptions. No one could look at her performance with a rational eye and find anything lacking, but she was constantly treated as a liability. I never once saw her behave as if she had a handicap, yet her own successful efforts were drowned in a sea of conflicting assumptions as to her capabilities. Her teachers refused to help her obtain braille music, yet insisted that she not learn from recordings. Her seeing eye dog (my dog soul mate, Abby) was once taken off the stage in the middle of her performance, with her professor whispering in her ear, "If you stop singing, I will fail you." And she was also once accused of ruining a pianist's Master's recital because Abby did not like Hindemith and kept jiggling in her collar. A note on that: as a graduate of the same program with the same degree as the pianist in question, and as a good friend of said pianist, I would say the fault lies entirely in the performer that cannot maintain her concentration and poise. Perhaps I'm biased, but ask any performer and they will tell you the same. Finally, my friend began losing her love of music and changed her major; immediately being met with a professionalism and respect of the success that she so constantly demonstrated. Not all Southern professors are ignorant, and thankfully she found some that appreciated an excellent student when they met one. The girl even pulled off a major in literature if that tells you anything about her determination and abilities.

As deeply as I respect her for how she put so much ignorance to shame in her education, it is her response to grief that constantly moves me. Her grace breaks my heart as she faces tragedies that most of us will never even conceive of. After knowing me for some time, she told me of the first great grief of her young life, which was not the blindness in itself as one might assume. No, she had been told by a specialist when she was sixteen that with one more operation, she would be able to see well enough to drive, and then the specialist had botched the operation and she had woken up to darkness and no ready explanation. The doctor had simply sent her home after accidentally cutting a tiny but essential vein in her eye with a scant apology. Not only had she lost the hope of more vision, but she had been robbed of the precious little she had had in that eye. When I met her, she had a glass eye covering the shriveled remains of what had been her best eye before the surgery. It is telling of her character that she made good use of pulling the glass eye off to the utter delight and horror of her classmates and friends. I found her one day at the center of a group of my students all squealing as she theatrically pulled away the prosthetic to reveal the shriveled organ below. It wasn't until later in our friendship that she revealed the pain it still caused her. Pain was not something she allowed herself to indulge in often as she considered her life to be too occupied with living to do so.

Recently, she was struck with yet another twist of malignant fate: her mother, sister-in-law, and thirteen year old sister were killed by a drunk driver with the two young children in the car just barely surviving. My friend was the first to the hospital of all the family, since her father and brother were working in Iraq. She took the responsibilities of arrangements for the young ones and for the deceased as her family members began to arrive, some with a lack of appropriate response that was tragic in itself. I will spare the details for sake of discretion, but will say this: there is a seed of selfishness that grows so large in some of us as to obstruct any sense of love or proportion. That my friend faced this in the midst of an overwhelming grief and was able to tell me the story only a few months later instead of retreating into a catatonic shell is almost unbelievable to me. She told me of her lost loved ones with tears tracing down her cheeks but in a clear, strong voice. There is certainly no justice in one such as her having to face loss after loss that would cripple most of us. There is only a wonderment to see her soul resurrecting beauty from the ashes.

So to my dear friend, I say this: may your strength be verified as tested, and may you find happiness to the depth of your pain. May we all be better in ourselves simply knowing that someone like you exists and be grateful for the good fortune that allows us to know you and love you.

Lone Star

2010-06-07T00:48:00.003-04:00

Today was very unkind on the poker scene, and I feel inclined not to discuss it. So, I won't. Instead, I will lay some ground rules; mostly for myself, but also as a courtesy to those who might want to follow the blog. First of all, my intention is to update every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. For those anal enough to be checking my time stamp, you will see that I am writing this already behind schedule. My defense is that it is still Sunday a few miles West of here, and also that it is still Sunday where most of my loved ones currently are. So stop being so technical about it. But it does bring up a good point which is that our days and nights are somewhat mishmashed, so many of the blogs will be apprearing late at night on the proscribed "days".

The second matter is that I will most certainly not be spending all of my time discussing poker. I have quite enough of that in my moment to moment, so you will excuse me if I often digress. For example, right now, all I really want to talk about is this kill-me-now-I'm-so-happy chili con queso that we just made. It is moments like these that force me to the admission that I am a Texas girl and my heart will always return there. Just tasting the sublimity of melty cheesiness studded with hot peppers, cilantro and fresh tomatoes transports me to the state of my birth where the cultures of the Wild West and Mexico collide and create something so unique...and tasty. I was appalled and devastated when I asked a few college friends when going to school in the Midwest if there were any good Mexican joints around and was met with the response, "Well, yeah, there's Taco Bell just around the corner." I hope you can imagine my horror being met with a whole section of the country that was obviously uninitiated in the divinities of Salsa and Fajitas. I think that was when I really came to the conclusion that I needed to get serious about cooking so that I might give myself access to the delectables that, in my opinion, no one should go without. So, without further ado, I will return to my happy midnight munching and indulge in the soft memories of a place like no other.

P.s. If you would like to experience a piece for yourself, here's the recipe that started it. I just added a pound of ground turkey, chili spiced.

http://homesicktexan.blogspot.com/2008/04/more-natural-chile-con-queso.html

D O J

2010-06-04T14:31:00.007-04:00

People needing constant validation of justice should avoid poker. In a way, I wish that someone could have accurately described to me before I started playing just how difficult and random the variance would be. But, having a good idea of the math, I don't think I would have believed how easy it is to begin adopting superstitions based on cycles that cluster up in favor of one random scenario after another. There are players who have been in the game for years - some of the "best" (you've seen them on TV if you've ever watched poker) - who have favorite hands that mathematically have little to no actual value. They're just hands that delivered more than they should in the player's memory and are therefore elevated above reason. For example, the ten-deuce played so well for Doyle Brunson that the two cards are simply known as "the Doyle Brunson". To be fair, he would still say that ace-ace is his favorite hand, but I guarantee his eighty-year old pulse quickens just a bit every time he's dealt his namesake just for the good memories. It is obviously stupid and unprofitable, but I can assure you that our brains more easily accept vivid experience and reward (or punishment) rather than cold, hard reason. Tom and I have just been through a stretch where he received near constant punishment for four straight months. Imagine going to work and finding that you will be required to pay your boss for the privilege of sitting there for your allotted time, and simply because someone (in our case, those referred to as the poker gods) has decided this would be so. Thankfully, the cycle has begun to roll over and we are most certainly stronger players for trudging through the gale... but I still would prefer that things were as predictable as they should be just for the sake of mental health. Well, maybe it would be more accurate to say mental comfort. It is becoming more and more necessary to attend to the solid health of our psyches and so, in a way, we are finding this an opportunity for strength that neither one of us have found before.

All that said, there are still rules in poker and the violation of these rules, though rare, is still responded to with justice:

Last night, I was involved in a hand that I was almost certainly winning, and I was winning big. It was one of those hands that pretty much defines a particular session, depending on which way it falls. In this case, I was looking at a session I was going to leave smiling. As the fourth card came down, I had only one opponent left in the pot as the other (better) player had folded when the first three cards came out. Just as the player remaining hit "call" to my bet on the turn, the player no longer in the pot typed into the chat window the two cards he had folded on the previous street. Man, my blood started boiling again just remembering the moment. Let me explain: the entire game of poker is based on statistics and human behavior and deciphering that behavior to determine what cards your opponents might be holding. This information is required to be gained simply through betting behaviors (or mannerisms if you're lucky enough to be making it as a live player). "Table talk" - basically, anything said by anyone not in the hand or anyone in the hand speaking about anything other than their own behavior or hand - is strictly (STRICTLY) forbidden. In my particular example, the better player detailing in the middle of my domination what he had been so smart to fold let the less competent player know that he would be stupid to call on the last card with anything less. And, by the way, anything less was all he could have. Also by the way, he calls with that something less almost one-hundred percent of the time unless advised otherwise. Well, I watched in dismay as this player, who generally wasn't pausing for thought longer than a couple seconds, began to really think about how the hand had gone down. Finally, he realized what he was not capable of realizing on his own: "I'm beat." And he folded. Well, I don't think I've ever been so angry at the poker table. I immediately began berating the player who had ruined my prospects and was only getting more enraged by his benign rejections of my wrath. Of course, I was at this point so focused on venting my full indignation on this guy that I was ignoring all my other tables. After a few very poorly played hands due to this, I was officially on what I would like to call "murder tilt". Thankfully, Tom was in the room and was able to help me extract myself so that I could take a break and attempt to regain some perspective. When I told him what had happened though, he nearly went on murder tilt just to hear it. It really is that bad of an infraction, let me tell you. So, I finally remembered my recourse and e-mailed the situation to the poker site's moderators. The response I received is still singing in my heart. They congratulated me for being vigilant to the integrity of the game and said that the player in question had been reminded of the rules in case he was not aware of them. Any future violations could result in a site ban. Perhaps it is the rarity of it that makes it so very sweet, but I will still savor the title of "vigilance", seeking justice in the midst of chaos.

A Meditation

2010-06-02T20:20:00.004-04:00

Growing up, my dad often took my brother and I fishing; not an unusual experience for a young girl in East Texas mind you. My dad would set up my line for me and thread some worm on the hook and even cast it for me, until I got old enough to realize that casting was at least ninety percent of the fun and I wanted to do it myself. I still let him take care of the worms and hooks though; no need to be too logical about independence. The pond was so small, you could almost throw your line from one bank to the other but had to be quick about reeling your hook across as there were only shallow lanes that were stump-free. We learned the map of that glorified puddle quickly, but still spent hours at a time in the hypnotic rhythm of cast and reel. Most days, we would catch just enough for my dad to clean and for my mom to fry up, and some days there just wouldn't be any bites at all. Whenever this happened, I had a tendency to believe that if I just kept moving around, I would find where the fish were hiding. It also sticks in my memory, just so, that every time I would move to a different bank, my brother or my dad would catch a fish in the exact spot I had just left. I'm guessing that my memory is slightly myopic on this point, but there's no arguing rationally with the certainty of injustice. There was one day in particular that is gilded in the light of perfection, however. It seemed like the surface of the pond was boiling with all the fish bouncing around the surface. Who knows what suicidal bent had taken over the poor fish, but I got to the point that I simply hovered my hook over the surface of the water right at the bank and let them catch themselves. It was almost like they were in a tidy line underwater, taking their turns jumping up to catch hold of the glittering god of their mass delusion. Of course, crazy fish still make good eating.

Poker players out there will roll their eyes as I make the obvious analogies to be had in these few images, but please allow them anyway. It is terribly relevant to compare the rhythms of poker and the strategies of hooking the big ones to fishing. I'm certainly not novel in my application of the metaphor as it is common to call bad players "fish"; horrific players being referred to as "whales" just by the way. What I'm guessing is one of the unspoken strengths of the metaphor, however, is the strength of meditation. Having experienced it myself and also having enjoyed the company of great amateur fishermen, I know this to be one of the silent appeals of the sport. Hours of quiet and nerve untying rhythms. Pulling up a piece of shade and letting the peaks of excitement when catching one take you and then bring you right back to the quiet waiting. It is essential to being a successful poker player to have this quiet within you and to return to it after every ebb and flow. It is simply too easy to get carried along with the disappointments or strokes of good luck and to lose sight of the fact that poker is best played as an act of patience. Waiting for the perfect moment to sink the hook.

Sugar and spice

2010-05-31T18:55:00.002-04:00

To shortcut the stress of writing a first post, I will direct your attention to hammeredquads.blogspot.com. There you may find the history of my current position and the context launching this blog. I'll give you a couple minutes to go ahead and do that...

...

Dusting of hands and let us begin.

I have made quite a deal of playing poker as a female, and should probably offer some illustration of such a possibly questionable presumption. After all, we are basking in the relative glory of the post-feminist liberation movement, so it might come as a shock to some of the more sheltered among us that such things might still be an issue. So, I will specify that there is in fact relatively little issue online since most of the players assume that they are playing all males anyway (although, it strikes me as completely absurd that I am constantly addressed as sir or man when my screen name includes the French delicacy, "fleur"...). On the rare occasion that sex is acknowledged and becomes an issue, it is in the context of over the top flirting peculiar to the anonymity of online chat spaces. Of course, I find this just as irritating as what occurs when I step into a live poker room, perhaps even more so since I can't exploit any real profit from the online flaw whereas profit abounds in live games. Case in point:

After a handful of ventures into casinos, I had already become used to the "gentlemen" to either side of me showing me their cards and "educating" the little miss at the table. All of which was lovely since the only bad thing about poker is having to guess what someone has. What I had not truly experienced was what I would call the "Big Slick" kinda guy. The one that sees a young woman sit down and imagines that all of her assets are as good as his. This piece of my education in the live poker world was provided at a casino in Oklahoma City. As soon as I sat down, I looked across from me and found the greasiest, shiniest specimen of male chauvinism I have ever had the misfortune to share such a close space with...and I spent four years among officers and enlisted alike trying to attain such heights. Anyway, he immediately let me know his assessment of me by announcing to the table that "they didn't want to mess with this one," delivered with a wink of his fat eyelids in my direction. Let me translate: around a poker table, this loosely means "fresh meat; have at 'er boys." To which, I gave my customary smile that speaks all sincerity but hides lethality in the corners. About half an hour later, he was no longer winking and his sheen was enhanced by a thin layer of sweat. He was beginning to see through the sweet facade as his chips slowly accrued on my side of the table. We got involved in a hand together, which was not a rarity, but which held the import of a line being drawn in the sand. I could sense in every line of his tensing posture that this was the hand he was going to make his stand with. Which was fine by me, because I had just flopped a monster and I was planning to eat this slimy chump for dessert. I didn't even have to say please and the lout threw his last chip in; me gleefully adding my own to the pile. He paled noticeably seeing my confidence and knowing at this point that I was no innocent to the game and would know when I had him where I wanted him. His eyes were glued to the table when the next card came down, and I saw the relaxing of his shoulders that meant he had found his miracle. Throwing over his two cards, he showed a hand that had found one of two cards in the deck that could beat my own. As he drew the massive pile of chips towards him, he gave me a look that couldn't have said more clearly, "That's why you don't play with the big boys, sweetie." His recently rewarded foolishness was shaken visibly, however, as this little sweetie pulled two more large bills from my pocket and asked the dealer for a refresh. Unfortunately, luck is not much of a lady or at least not one with a sense of loyalty to her own, and he got away with his sense of superiority in tact. Then again, it is to my benefit that he and all his kind are allowed to exist in such large numbers in this profession. So here's to all the cretins out there and may you have the luck of avoiding me and my kind.